My Days by R. K. Narayan

I could afford it, I gave them a cup of coffee at a restaurant on Hundred Feet Road. The cup of coffee blunted the listeners’ critical faculties and made them declare my work a masterpiece. When I read it aloud, seated in the shade of the lone tree on Kukanahalli meadow, and heard my words falling on my ears I felt a new thrill each time. At the end of the last line a pregnant silence, while I awaited the good word from my select public.
    â€œWould you like that I should read it again?” I asked, and one or the other said, “Oh, no. I have absorbed every word.”
    â€œAnd what do you think of it?”
    â€œI felt the tears coming, but I suppressed them.” Excellent. Precisely what I wished every literary effort to produce. And then: “Have you read anything similar to this anywhere?”
    â€œThis is a rare, unique effort; sometimes reminds me of Shelley’s ‘Adonais’ or some of Shakespeare’s sonnets.” Precisely, precisely. No comparison would be more welcome and appropriate.
    My next effort was “Divine Music.” I composed it in a state of total abstraction, sitting on a bench at Kukanahalli Tank. I went there one afternoon when the sun was blazing, with a pad and pencil, and filled sheet after sheet even after the sun had set and I could hardly see what my hand was writing. I sit at the edge of the water, listening to the plash of wavelets softly striking the bank. (I later discovered that this was only an unconscious echo of a verse in a Marie Corelli novel which began “The soft low plash of waves, . . . Mariner’s voice singing out at sea.”) Wavelet after wavelet striking the mud bank, their crests reflecting the full moon—the sight and their soft repeated whispers and the tune of the night breeze induce a sort of self-forgetfulness, in which state I feel an inexplicable aching of the spirit, which churns up a single tear, which rolls down, but before touching the ground is caught between the blades of grass and shines like a diamond or a star. The moment the tear is detached, the sinner’s (What sin? I could not really say) repentance is admitted and his soul gains a release; it emerges and fills the space between the stars and beyond, and he hears clearly the music of the spheres. What did it all mean? I don’t know. But I was terribly moved and impressed and had no doubt that this was going to add to the world’s literary treasure. Naturally my younger brother and the coffee-drinking appreciators endorsed my view. My circle of readers was now enlarging, consequently also the outlay on coffee at the Hundred Feet Road restaurant; I had to seek my mother’s help for more pocket money, and she provided it ungrudgingly—an increase from three to five rupees—and that was adequate to forestall any possible hostile reactions and buy favourable opinion. I wrote a third piece without any loss of time. Again it was all about the stars in the sky and floating away on the other side of the stars. I do not remember what I called this piece. This was less successful than the other two when tried on my readers, being a trifle more obscure and mystifying. These efforts were totally unclassifiable—neither poetry, nor prose, nor fiction. Prose in physical form, sound and echo of poetry, and flights of utmost fiction. Odd combination of moods and methods.
    I got the pieces copied on demy-sized bond paper, one side only, typed with a generous margin and double-spaced (about all this I learnt from a book named How to Sell Your Manuscripts ). The typist, who was really a violinist, owned the Venus Typewriting Institute. He was obliging and efficient and charged me (deferred-payment system) two annas a page. When I had typing work, I visited him at his home beside the Jagan Mohan Palace and waited at his door while he ate his morning chapatty, spreading the ghee on it with his finger. Pacing up and down between me and the